festival edition - rhodes university

Rhodos - Festival 1 -11 6/26/11 9:06 AM

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C M Y CM MY CY CMY K

The Rhodes University Community Newsletter

June

201

1

Festival Edition

Acollaboration of excellence

page 5


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Rhodos:Festival EditionProduced by:Communications andMarketing Division

Co-Editors:Adrienne CarlisleZamuxolo Matiwana

Writers:Jeannie McKeownCathy GushSarah-Jane BradfieldAnna-Karien OttoZamuxolo Matiwana

Photography Editor:Sophie Smith

Photographers:Sophie SmithPaul Greenway /3PPhotographyJudith DoubellAnna-Karien OttoDianne Jordan (designRobert Haxton)Jen SchneebergerRichard AntrobusJane BucklandZamuxolo Matiwana

Thank you very much toeveryone who supplied uswith images.

Design & Production:Sally Dore

TWO The Rhodes University Community Newsletter

A Taste for the macabreDrama Masters student Debbie Robertson ismaking her debut as a director withpsychological thriller/drama Taste, which ispart of the Student Theatre programme. Herwork is enigmatically described in the Festivalprogramme: “Like any stylish fine dining, themain course is far more succulent than thestarter, and for dessert? You never know whatmight be cooking.”

Inspired by thoughts around food in our society, Robertson firstthought of the idea for the play while writing down some ideasin her journal during her Honours year. She then found someinteresting links between what people consider a delicacy andothers taboo. “This made me think of how we all have a differentmoral compass, yet how we often indulge in sex, food, wine oreven in the negative way we treat people. So the overridingquestion I asked myself was: how much of people’s true selveswill be revealed if society’s rules or boundaries were takenaway?”

The play was devised and workshopped with the entire cast ofseven, using the Peter Greenaway film The Cook, the Wife, theThief and her Lover as well as Roald Dahl’s short stories Tasteand Poison as inspirational springboards. It centres around agroup of friends who go away for the weekend and “play gameswith each other, but by their own rules”. She said this revealswhat often lies hidden behind the reasons for honesty, revenge,sex and betrayal.

Robertson said it had been challenging yet satisfying that theyall worked on the text and characters together. “It has allowedthe actors to really engage with their characters, because thecharacter was devised by the actor from the very beginning.”This was done by listening to music, writing character sketches,brainstorming and improvisations. “This does mean, however,that there are often changes to the script, but everyone is reallyunderstanding of that,” she added.

In one exercise the cast mimed to music and in another theyasked each other questions ‘in character’. “Therefore whatemerges becomes the character they instinctively want toportray. Some of the dynamics between the different charactersevolved from this excavation,” said Robertson.

Transcending space and pushing limitations“Transmit, transform and transport” ishow the media release describesinTranceit. And these words encapsulateexactly what these three performancesare all about. Three Masters students:Gavin Krastin (Choreography), JenSchneeberger (Contemporary Performance)and Nadine Joseph (Choreography) arepresenting some innovative site-specificphysical theatre pieces on the Fringe thisyear.

Krastin’s piece is entitled sub- and will be performed inover ten spaces at Nombulelo Secondary School. Theimpulse driving the piece sprang from “feeling disenchantedwith being sedentary, sitting in a darkened theatre, wherethe audience doesn’t always engage, like watching TV”.In sub- the audience is involved in the progression of thedramatic action. Because some of the events occursimultaneously, the narrative is not linear- “a de-hierarchisation” - better described as “moving from sideto side” rather than from beginning to end.

Schneeberger chose Jean Anouilh’s translation of Antigoneto present a series of installations and vocal performances

through which two guides lead the audience. Employingthe techniques of Meredith Monk, she describes it as“exploring an aural landscape, revealing the semiotic thatexists in language”. As she emphasises, this is not simpledialogue, “it’s where words come apart, where the humanvoice growls, chatters and screams as easily as it speaks”.

Joseph has entitled her performance dis.clo.sure as itdeals with the loss of women’s voices in a post apocalypticworld. “It tells the story of a woman who will become aprisoner of war if no one does anything to help her.”Exploring issues around rape and sexual violence, Josephemployed the Stanislavski technique of memory recallto draw on experiences from her own life as well as fromthe cast’s lives.

For the first time this year, the pieces will be examinedas part of the practical research component of the Mastersdegree, with the dissertation component forming partof the research framework. Joseph says it has beenimportant to them to showcase what they have beenproducing as a Department. “For all of us this is acrystallisation of what we’ve been doing over the years,”adds Schneeberger.

Joseph agrees: “By opening up the performance in adifferent way, it allows other voices to be heard. We’reevoking change, pushing ourselves.”

“It’s not just theatre, it’s an experience,” Schneebergerconcludes.

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The National Arts Festival isGrahamstown’s great mid-year extravaganza - anunmatched opportunity forartists to showcase theirtalents. Rhodes Universityplays a central role in theFest, as it is affectionatelyknown, with the Departmentsof Drama, Music and Fine Artspearheading the University’scontribution. This year, thatcontribution will be largerthan ever before.

Prof Andrew Buckland, 2010 Fleur de Capnominee and Head of the Drama Department,has seen numerous Festivals, and could beforgiven for feeling slightly jaded. This year,however, he is full of enthusiasm over aninnovation that will, see the Drama Mastersby Coursework students presenting theirpractical pieces on the Fringe. In line witha world-wide shift towards Practice-as-Research- a paradigm which views creative performanceas a valid research output - the emphasis hasbeen shifted towards the practical section ofthe MA course and the presentation of thepractical has moved to the middle of the secondyear of study. This, says Buckland, allowsstudents to substantially improve theirproduction values, and gives external examinersthe opportunity to view the productions withan audience present.

Joseph and Jen Schneeberger present theirMasters pieces under the title inTranceit, whichis described in the Festival programme as “anevocative collection of site-specific work”.Schneeberger’s take on contemporaryperformance sees her using the text of Antigoneto explore vocal performance; choreographersKrastin and Joseph present sub- and dis.clo.surerespectively. With the theme of Transmit,Transform and Transport linking the productions,audiences will gather at the Rhodes Theatreand be transported to the various venues aspart of the performance. “It’s not your typicalfare,” says Buckland.

Rhodes University is also presenting Taste onthe Student Theatre programme. Directed byfirst year Masters student Deborah Robertson,it is described as “thrilling, comic and delicious.”

The Festival is an organisational hub for theDrama Department, acting as a crucible forDrama students and, in addition, allowing themto observe a great variety of live theatre nototherwise available in Grahamstown. In addition,Buckland describes the advantages to currentstudents of viewing alumni on stage, and realisingthat the honing of one’s craft is

not something that ends with graduation.

Dr Jeffrey Brukman, Head of the MusicDepartment, explains that as the National ArtsFestival falls in University vacation time, it isgenerally only postgraduate students who areable to perform. This year, BMus fourth yearstudent Mia Pistorius is doing a series of fivesolo recitals and piano duo Jacque du Plessis(MMus student) and Andrew Duncan (BMus fourthyear) present Four Hands. The venue for boththese shows is the Beethoven Room in the MusicDepartment (Beethoven House). Acclaimedpianist and Senior Lecturer in the MusicDepartment, Catherine Foxcroft, will beperforming with the Grahamstown Sextet onthe Arena programme.

The Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) students are alsoin the spotlight for Festival 2011. The Fine ArtsDepartment is holding its inaugural postgraduateexhibition, which is entitled Wet Paint in anallusion to the largely exploratory nature ofthe mid-degree works on display. Head ofDepartment, Prof Dominic Thorburn, says MFAstudents are invited to showcase an aspect oftheir work-in-progress towards their finalpresentation. It is hoped that this exhibitionwill serve as a mid-degree touchstone forstudents engaged in the two-year long course,he says. Thorburn and Senior Lecturer Maureende Jager will co-curate the exhibition, thevenue for which is the Alumni Gallery in theAlbany Museum, and MFA students will taketurns to act as guides to the artworks.

The annual Student Exhibition, which showcasesundergraduate work in the airy space of theFine Arts Department building on SomersetStreet, will again comprise high calibre workin a variety of media, both traditional andcontemporary. This Exhibition has built up aconsiderable following, and is a valuablemarketing tool for the Rhodes School of FineArt, both during the Main Festival and theSchools Festival that follows it.

showcaseRhodes students showcase talent

at National Arts Festival

Fine Art Head of Department,Professor Dominic Thorburn

Music and MusicologyHead of Department,Dr Jeff Brukman

Drama Head of Department,Professor Andrew Buckland

THREEFestival Edition | June 2011

Jen Scheeberger - Antigone

Theatre in motion


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Rhodes alumnus Richard Antrobus, whocreated and performed in the

critically acclaimed Stiltedat last year’s Festival,

will be premieringhis new show

Tshini Kwedinithis year.

Antrobus, whocompleted his BA

(Hons) in Drama atRhodes University in

2004, said he isexcited about beinginvolved in thedirecting role,alongside anotherRhodes alumnus,Tristan Jacobs.

“Although I’ve beenin a lot ofperformances, I’mnew to directing.It’s always a biggerjob than you

anticipate, because it involves so many areas,” he said. Co-director Jacobs,who graduated from Rhodes with a BA (Hons) in Drama in 2009, has beencontinuously involved in Rhodes-affiliated productions since and while hehas also never directed before either, he said he’s up for the challenge.Being an experienced performer, Jacobs said he “knows what it’s like tobe a performer being directed, so in my capacity as co-director now I tryand imagine switching the roles around.”

Describing the play as a “simple and enjoyable, heart-warming tale ofovercoming obstacles and finding one’s destiny”, Antrobus said the showis filled with humour and celebration. Using members of his communitycircus skills development initiative, OddBody Theatre Collaborative,Antrobus said the show provides a visual spectacle with circus elementsof song, dance, clowning, music, stilts, juggling, acrobatics, and othercircus tricks. “The show is a family event that has something in it foreveryone,” he said.

The two describe Grahamstown as a good training base for aspiring theatre-makers as it provides access to venues, and various sources of expertise.Antrobus and Jacobs say they are learning to deal with the complex dynamicsinvolved in theatre production. “Theatre contributes hugely to a culturalfestival, which otherwise risks the danger of falling into the trap of simplybecoming a bazaar. It is intangible and watching it is an experience thatyou can only take away with you in your hearts and memories. It is foodfor the soul,” said Antrobus.

Antrobus will also be involved in a further two productions involving oldRhodians: Beelzebub, directed by Rhodes alumna Brink Scholtz, and 3 Actsof Love, directed by Bauke Snyman, which features Rhodes alumni SheenaStannard and Sarah Seymour.

Tshini Kwedini premiers at Fest

FOUR The Rhodes University Community Newsletter

FlickerFestival favourite, and 2010 Standard Bank Ovationwinner, The Butcher Brothers returns to Grahamstownthis year, with five performances at The Hangar. It’san example of the close ties and support networkthat Rhodes University gives its alumni. Many of thecast and crew - including Stage Manager WesleyDeintjie (Rhodes 2003) - are old Rhodians, whiledirector Sylvaine Strike studied in Cape Town.

Set in a family butchery in 1950's South Africa, Jaques de Silva (Rhodes2004) and Mongi Mthombeni (Rhodes 1999) play eponymous characters;Mthombeni filling the role of a prematurely retired ballroom dancer witha dependence on alcohol, and De Silva playing Boy, the loyal worker whoin fact keeps the butchery going. Incredibly for a play which relies on theemotional currency of the players, both actors are masked throughout,a feat which de Silva and Mthombeni, both of whom have previously workedwith Eastern Cape Drama Company Ubom!, manage with consummate skill.The comfortable, well-worn routines that exist between the two areshattered with the unexpected arrival of a baby, and their lives take onwhat has been described as a “strange and rather dark route.”

The mask-work was first conceived of and brought to the stage by Strikeand Assistant Director Daniel Buckland (Rhodes 2003), and is presentedin association with the Dark Laugh Theatre Company.

In a review by Robyn Sassen in the Artslink.co.za publication, thechoreographic and sound-based syncopations are highly praised, with theinterweaving of tango music and the sound effects for the knives and meatchunks being described by her as “beautiful, lending the work the kind ofspontaneous madness evoked by William Kentridge in his animated dancework with kitchen appurtenances.”

Sassen sums up The Butcher Boys by saying “A fresh-faced play with nowords, much blood and quite a lot of heart (both) warms and darkens thecockles.”

theatreThe Butcher BrothersCelebrated Rhodes alumna and award-winning physical theatrepractitioner and choreographer Athena Mazarakis returns tothe National Arts Festival this year.

Directed once again by Gerard Bester, Mazarakis and Craig Morris play a coupledesperately clinging to the way of life they know in Flicker, described as an “edgyphysical theatre work.” Mazarakis’ trademark exploration of the interaction betweenthe human body and the digital arts is taken a step further with the electronic presenceof theatre great Andrew Buckland woven into the production. The Festival programmedescribes Flicker as combining “innovative digital art with a compelling physicallanguage to tell a surreal tale of great urgency”.

Buckland explains the apparent contradiction of having a theatrical presence, whilenot being actually present, as speaking to the idea of performance. The show, hesays, “is concerned with the act of performance, the performer's attitude toperformance and the relationship the actors have with both themselves and theaudience.”

Mazarakis and Morris, who are rehearsing in Johannesburg, have incorporated Bucklandinto the production in the form of digital inserts, which he has been recording overthe past month in response to their questions sent to him via the internet.

Buckland calls Mazarakis “an extraordinary artiste”. She won the Silver 2010 StandardBank Ovation Award in the Physical Theatre category for elev(i)ate 2 and, alongwith the team of Morris and Bester, was responsible for the award-winning productionAttachments No 1-7.

Flicker “takes the idea that every little thing you do really does make a difference”,a message becoming ever more urgent as the threats to our planet increase inseverity with every day that goes by.

Within the world created by the actors, time is runningout, and the protagonists' smallest actions impact visibly on the worldaround them, accelerating its “literal dissolving and disappearancebeneath their feet”.


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FIVEFestival Edition | June 2011

A collaboration ofexcellence

excellence

What started as whispers in the Drama Department corridorsbetween two major companies’ artistic directors has nowfinally materialised. Ubom! Eastern Cape Drama Companyand First Physical Theatre Company will collaborate for thefirst time during the 2011 National Arts Festival.

“There is great excitement all round. Both companies are well known for theirexcellence in producing thrilling works of theatre, yet primarily in separate genres,”said Ms Sarah Roberson, Ubom! Projects and Marketing Manager. Commenting onbehalf of both companies she said they now had a chance to “merge our skills andfeed off each other”.

“It’s an exciting learning process, and chance for thoughtful exchange; both inconceptual work and in the physical presentation of the production.”

More good news for the collaboration is that the production was accepted topremiere on the Arena platform and both companies were elated. “It’s a real honourto already be accepted on the Arena in only its second year running,” said Roberson.

“The National Arts Festival promotes it as a bridge between the Fringe and Mainprogrammes, and so we’re confident that with the exposure and prestige the Arenawill garner, acceptance to the Main programme won’t be far off. This year, though,we’re just really excited to bring such an excellent production to this platform andprove the Eastern Cape matches up with the ‘big-city’ companies.”

After a successful National Arts Festival in 2010, the two companies are lookingforward to once again electrifying their audiences. Ubom! Eastern Cape DramaCompany and First Physical Theatre each scooped an inaugural Standard BankOvation Award last year. Festinos can expect more breathtaking production fromthe collaboration.

This year, the two companies are bringing festinos Wreckage. It is described ashilarious, deeply moving and “the meeting of worlds that unsettles, stuns, anddelights”.

Wreckage cast member and Drama Head of Department, Prof Andrew Buckland, isan experienced, immensely talented and versatile performer. He has been involvedin theatre since the 1980s.

Roberson said the directing and choreographic team, Brink Scholtz and Athina Vahla,had created a theatrical world that “draws audience members into an experiencethey won’t easily forget”.

“Sensational singing, daring dance, captivating performances, an impressive setdesign by Barati Montshiwa, and lighting design by Guy Nelson, combining to presenttwo centuries of Eastern Cape (hi)stories promises this production will be an epic,enlivening event,” she added.

Wreckage was inspired by the stories of shipwrecks along the Eastern Cape coastlineduring the 18th and 19th centuries. The Eastern Cape coastline is the last restingplace of many ships from Europe that brought settlers, soldiers, merchants, fortuneseekers and missionaries to the Eastern Cape shores, said Prof Buckland. “Many oftheir crew and passengers cast ashore in very unfamiliar, often hostile environments.The encounters between these castaways and the indigenous people of the EasternCape have spawned stories, fables, myths and ‘histories’ for hundreds of years andprovide a rich source for theatrical adventure,” added Buckland.

The title was chosen to symbolise “the age of wrecks and the evocative imagerywhich comes from thinking about total destruction”. “More specifically, the impetuscame from The Sunburnt Queen by author Hazel Crampton, leading to the idea ofthe shipwreck, which became a gateway to explore on a more universal level thenotion of collision and clashing, and what that means to us all,” he added.

Ubom! Eastern Cape Drama Company and First Physical Theatre Company are bothassociated with Rhodes University. Their main aim is to give back to the Grahamstowncommunity and surrounding areas through arts.


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SIX The Rhodes University Community Newsletter

Writer/director Brink Scholtz has been exceedinglybusy since she left Grahamstown at the end of lastyear.

Scholtz studied Psychology and Drama at Rhodes and spent five yearsworking for Ubom! Eastern Cape Drama Company, initially as a performerand then as resident director, after which she left Grahamstown to becomean independent director.

But she is back with three productions at the 2011 National Arts Festival:Beelzebub (with mime artist and legendary stiltwalker Richard Antrobus);Loss and Having with Nicola Elliot and Sonja Smit (in which she alsoperforms), and Wreckage with acclaimed visual and performance artist,Athina Valha.

“A common element in all these pieces is that I have collaborated withvery interesting choreographers,” says Scholtz. “I deliberately feel like Idon’t want to play it safe. It’s quite scary, quite thrilling.”

It was a very busy 2010, as a winner of the Writing Beyond the Fringeprogramme, she travelled to Belgium and the Netherlands on an exchangetour to attend the Passaporta Literature Festival. She then spent sometime in Cape Town directing two plays: Die Sendeling and Spyt. Her mother,the novelist Ingrid Winterbach, wrote the latter. Both plays were stagedat the KKNK, Aardklop Festival and Stellenbosch University’s Woordfeesearlier this year. Scholtz says it was wonderful working with her mother.“She’s not into fixed meaning, so she was quite delighted by new possibilitiesfor staging and interpretation.”

The script for Wreckage was devised by Brink, choreographer Athina Valhaand the cast, including Andrew Buckland, who also performs in the play.“It was tricky to negotiate our way through the story as the performersspeak different languages, both linguistically and culturally and in termsof their craft. Because the play deals with cultural collision - the Europeansurvivors of shipwrecks along the Eastern Cape coast - it was interestingto recognise these parallels within ourselves.”

As a director she likes to spend time getting to know the cast and how theytell stories, almost like learning to speak a different language. “I am theone scripting the narrative, constantly using the stories of the cast, drawingon the way they tell stories.” She says working with different choreographerswas a bit like bringing two different worlds together. “It was tricky becausethe fields overlap but the methodologies are different. It’s not a questionof writing the script and then choreographing bits of it. It’s about findinga single language,” she says.

With the physical theatre work Loss and Having,Scholtz teamed up with two of her close friends,Nicola Elliott and Sonja Smit in a double billof what she describes as the “archival,museum pieces”. Smit’s piece, entitledHow Sonja Smit explains soccer to a deaddog is “a very odd response to the FifaSoccer World Cup” and was performedat Spier Contemporary last year. TheDance Umbrella 2011 commissionedElliott’s Proximity Loss and Having, whereit was warmly received. Scholtz co-directedboth pieces and will be performing in Lossand Having.

For Beelzebub, Scholtz was the writerand director along with jazz artistand choreographer Levern Botha.Featuring Richard Antrobus(whose background is danceand mime) and NoluvuyoShwempe, who trained withJanet Buckland’s Amaphikodance group, again thefocus was on bringingdifferent stories togetheras the script was stronglydevised by the cast.

come from two very text-basedproductions (Spyt and DieSendeling) it was a kind of openingup to finding the language in adifferent way. The first way in isalways language - I’m quite verbalby nature. So it was trying to findhow language can become aphysical thing too, how itcan become an image- the immediacy ofaction andimage,” sheconcludes.

Finding a single language

On CueWhat would the National Arts Festival be without Cuenewspaper, available from a friendly vendor everymorning and helping thousands of festival-goers plantheir day? Now in its 25th year, Cue is an institution,and the longest running independent festivalnewspaper in the world.

Produced from the dynamic Africa Media Matrix Building, on the RhodesUniversity campus, Cue is, however, no longer simply a newspaper. Theundertaking has grown from humble beginnings to become CueMedia,under the chairmanship of Brian Garman. CueMedia incorporates not onlythe familiar tabloid-style paper but also CueOnline, established as newmedia began to make its presence felt in South Africa, and which drawsin and creates a virtual home for CueTV, CueRadio, and CuePix. In fact,the Africa Media Matrix transforms for the duration of the Arts Festivalinto a fully fledged news agency, staffed predominantly by the Journalismand Media Studies students. This provides an unparalleled opportunity forthem to gain hands-on experience.


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Aerial artist, composer and

choreographer are just three ways to

describe Shaun Acker. While studying

towards his Bachelor of Music degree

and Masters in Drama at Rhodes

University, Acker explored many

intriguing artistic avenues. He won

the Sanlam Prize for Best Actor for

his portrayal of Mr O in Die Bannelinge

and performed at the Circus

Hippodrome at Gold Reef City, where

he won the award for Most Promising

Circus Artist in 2004.

At this year’s National Arts Festival, he will feature

as “a ghost musician” in the cabaret clown noir

spectacle Kardiávale, directed by Emilie Starke.

Presented by a conspiracy of clowns -- a production

company that won a Standard Bank Ovation Award

in 2010 -- the play also features fellow Rhodes Drama

alumnus, Rob Murray.

“Since Kardiávale is a cabaret, my role is to

accompany the action on stage, be it ambient or

song accompaniment. Between me and another

musician, Natalie Mason, we perform a combination

of instruments, vocals and props. I perform piano,

keyboard, saxophone, clarinet, percussion and props

while Natalie performs viola, piano and percussion.

We also chip in as the voices of a few offstage

characters,” says Acker.

Lately, he has been playing the saxophone with

Windworx, a non-profit orchestra comprised of over

30 wind and brass instruments. Theatre-wise, he

has collaborated with City Varsity’s The Domain (to

be seen on the student theatre programme) as well

as with Brink Scholtz and Ingrid Winterbach for Spyt,

which was performed at the Stellenbosch University

Woordfees and KKNK earlier this year.

As a composer, Acker has created music for many

productions, including Reza de Wet’s musical play,

Heathcliff Goes Home. This year he composed for

made in order to fly, a physical theatre piece

choreographed by Nicola Elliott. He describes the

process as “creating a nondescript soundscape which

draws on, and amalgamates, subtle electronica,

industrial sound, environmental sound, and human

breath”.

Acker learnt the solo trapeze while he and his

family were touring with Boswell-Wilkie and

Brian’s Circus and has trained with world-

renowned aerialists Tsogt Bayasgalan and Stanley

Bower. He says he is delighted to see no less than

three aerial performances on the Festival

programme and hopes that this will help in opening

a more permanent platform for contem-porary

aerial dance performance in South Africa.

Excited to be returning to Grahamstown for the

Festival, he says the six years he spent with the

Rhodes Drama department taught him “how to

recognise excellence in innovative contemporary

trends” which makes him “rarely satisfied with

anything I see- and I’m not shy about saying that.”

He says the most valuable thing he has learnt is

that if you are creating or performing work, is

to rigorously question and pull apart your

production. “Productions that are the most

arresting are ones where attention has been paid

to the barely perceptible performance details.

That’s what delineates intelligent theatre from

mindless entertainment,” he concludes.

music

Five Men

SEVENFestival Edition | June 2011

Loraine Beaton, an Honoursstudent in the Rhodes Drama Depart-ment, will be featuring Five Men, ashow designed to challenge ourconceptions of love and relationships.

“I wanted to make something that deals with romanticrelationships and how we get involved in them sorecklessly,” she said.

Beaton, who holds an undergraduate degree in fineart from Pretoria University and has a backgroundin English and Philosophy, said the play gives a previewinto “how guys think” and the perpetual struggleto find the ‘ONE’. “We all want to be with the rightone, and for it never to end, but yet we get involvedin relationships we know we shouldn’t and we knowwe’re going to get damaged. This play looks at thosecomplexities,” she said.

Beaton moved to Rhodes at the beginning of theyear after signing up for the Honours degree inDrama, and said she has found the experience ofdirecting theatre under supervision to bechallenging and invigorating. Having written FiveMen two years ago without any formal theatricaltraining, she said looking back she feels she couldhave done some things differently, but feels thisis all part of the challenge of maturing as anartist.

With her background in Fine Art, Philosophy andEnglish, she said she is better equipped toproduce quality work. “My background has taughtme how to think like an artist, and theatre isthe way I’m doing it. The point is I want tomake good theatre,” she said.

Traversing the world oftheatre and music


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James Cairns - Writer, director, performer“When you need to make a strategic decision, ask yourself: ‘what would China do?’”

It’s pointless taking James Cairns seriously. He’s old-school comedy; the kind that turns a stepladder, someclever “toons” and a few lighting effects into an alternative reality filled with characters you want to eitherhug or hit. Either way, you have to care because his genius is always tangible, even if his props aren’t.

On stage Cairns is a physical theatre practitioner par excellence, morphing between characters like a manpossessed. Offstage this writer, director, television actor and comedian is as skilled and sharp as a SwissArmy knife. His plays, Rat and Brother Number, received standing ovations; his one-man tours de force, TheSitting Man and Dirt, beat Andrew Buckland to win the 2010 Naledi award for Best Performance in a One-Person Show. That’s the league he’s in. And he’s only just beginning to climb the imaginary ladder. — CatPritchard.

Wayne Thornley - DirectorThornley never imagined his first involvement in a major motion picture would be as the director of a full-length animated movie. But sure enough, in 2012, when Zambezia (Triggerfish Studios) hits movie theatres,Thornley will get to see his name lead hundreds of producers, animators and CGI characters on the credit roll.

It’s a big deal for someone who fell into animation after seven years of slogging it out as an actor and directoron live-action films. Luckily, 33-year-old Thornley is in love with the freedom of the animation process. “Iwant wind, I get wind,” he says. “I want a talking elephant, I get a talking elephant. It’s amazing.”

adventure story is racing against two other CGI animated features currently in production to be the first tocome out of South Africa. Overseas, the film has been eliciting gasps from production studios when theylearn how small Thornley’s budget was. All thanks, he says, to the incredible family of producers and animatorshe has been working with. — Eric Axelrod.

Mail and Guardian 200 Young SouthAfricans 2011 - Drama and MusicDepartment Alumni

Rob van Vuuren - Comedian, actor, writer, directorWho says men can’t multitask? Not Rob van Vuuren. The blonde-moustached godfather of all things zefmay be better known as Corne’s sidekick Twakkie, but Van Vuuren isn’t just a comedian. He’s also anactor, playwright, director ... and a ballroom dancer.

Since he graduated with Honours in Drama from Rhodes University in 1997 Van Vuuren has been a regularon the nation’s TV screens, not only as Twakkie in SABC 2’s The Most Amazing Show, but, as a presenter ofSA’s Got Talent and Crazy Games. In 2008 he donned top hat and tails to win the celebrity dance competitionStrictly Come Dancing. This year he bagged the inaugural Comic’s Choice breakthrough act award.

But Van Vuuren believes the best is yet to come, otherwise “there would be no reason to keep going”.

His most valuable lesson in life? He channels his inner Twakkie and answers: “Don’t be kak!” — Aphiwe Deklerk.

Bongani Ndodana-BreenBongani Ndodana-Breen shatters any conception that the world of classical music is a stuffy, Eurocentricanomaly in modern South Africa.

In 1998 he became the youngest classical composer to win a Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music.He is also the only composer from Africa to have been featured in a concert comprised entirely of his ownworks in the prestigious Composer Portraits series at the Miller Theatre in New York.

Like many South African classical artists Ndodana-Breen has found more fame and fortune abroad than athome, but his latest work, Winnie: The Opera, which premiered in South Africa in April, looks set to changethat.

Ndodana-Breen is inspired by his heritage, and traditional Xhosa music feeds into much of what he does asa contemporary classical musician. He hopes to continue in this vein, writing more “operas and other worksthat continue to give a South African voice in classical music”. — Lisa van Wyk.

Source: Mail and Guardian newspaperalumniEIGHT The Rhodes University Community Newsletter


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NINEFestival Edition | June 2011

For Future Generations

Rhodes University’s International Library of African Music (ILAM),which has the largest archive of African music in sub-Saharan Africa,will feature prominently on the “must do” list of many NationalArts Festival music enthusiasts.

For Future Generations, an exhibition showcasing ILAM founder Hugh Tracey’s work in recordingand documenting the indigenous music of sub-Saharan Africa, will be on display for the durationof the Festival at the Albany History Museum, where it opened very successfully during therecent SciFest 2011.

This exhibition represents the outreach and education component of a Rand Merchant BankExpressions Programme that funded ILAM’s two-year cataloguing and digitising project. Theproject’s aim is to bring the heritage of African music, painstakingly preserved by Hugh Tracey,to a wider audience.

In the opening ceremony of the exhibition, speakers extolled Hugh Tracey’s consummate skillas a researcher, and praised both his dedication and that of his son, Emeritus Professor AndrewTracey, to collecting and preserving African music. For Future Generations displays a selectionof 20 African instruments from the Tracey collection, held by ILAM, as well as showcasing HughTracey’s print publications and audio recordings. There is video footage of “mine-dancing”,Shona music and story-telling and Chopi xylophone orchestras. The footage also includes a 1939Hugh Tracey film of Zulu bow music projected onto a big screen. Andrew Tracey’s film fromthe 1970’s, System of the Mbira is also shown. Display cabinets feature artefacts from field researchwhile photographs taken during field excursions bring Hugh Tracey’s work to vibrant life.

A handsome exhibit catalogue features a highly scientific and never-beforepublished 1932 report on the music of the Shona written by Hugh Tracey forthe Carnegie Foundation. Also included in the catalogue is a 20-item CDfeaturing a field recording of each instrument displayed in the exhibition.For Future Generations will be at the Albany History Museum until30 July 2011.

Festinos will be able to take advantage of two scheduled ‘walkabouts’ at the Museum on thefirst and last Sundays of the Festival. ILAM is also holding a free Sundowner concert at theMonument from 5pm – 6pm on Sunday July 3, and free daily lunch-hour concerts from 1pm- 2pm at the ILAM Amphitheatre throughout the Festival. All this is being done in collaborationwith the South African Post Office, which is launching a series of 10 commemorative stampsfeaturing African instruments at the Sundowner Concert on July 3.

ILAM will also host early evening performances of A Kalimba Encantadora, directed byAndrew Tracey and featuring Decio Gioielli from Brazil, Geoffrey and Andrew Tracey,Chris Carver and Elijah Madiba from African Musical Instruments and ILAM. It is describedon the National Arts Festival Programme as “an hour of musical indulgence”.

african music


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Fest showcasesRhodes Fine Art students’ work

TEN The Rhodes University Community Newsletter

Rhodes University Fine Art Masters students will, forthe first time, exhibit their work at the National ArtsFestival.

Billed in the programme as a “dynamic and insightful mid-stream ‘showand tell’” the exhibition entitled Wet Paint will be in the Rhodes AlumniGallery (Albany Museum) and consists of photographs, graphics, sculpture,drawing, paintings installation and digital arts.

Wet Paint will run concurrently with the undergraduates’ exhibition inthe Rhodes School of Art Gallery, which has become an annual featureon the Festival programme.

This is a great opportunity for both postgraduate and undergraduatestudents to showcase their work to festinos and the local community.

“Wet Paint is a show of Masters of Fine Art (MFA) work-in-progress,” saysmasters student, Mark Wilby. “So while there is some obligation toparticipate, the exhibition is a great opportunity to test current, developingmaterial before a critical audience. This is, of course, intimidating, butit’s also very useful to get a sense of public response at this stage,” headds. “More often than not, the work one sees in a gallery represents anintended punctuation, an exclamation mark perhaps, or a neat summationof ideas.”

Wilby will be exhibiting pieces of work that are more like “excerpts”from an ongoing narrative, “one that begins elsewhere, and might continue,somehow, onward while taking a momentary turn through the gallery”.

showcaseConstrained? | Oil on canvasLindi Lombard, third year student.

A little water clears us of this deed | Mixed Media and plastic bagsFrancois Knoetze, third year student.


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ELEVENFestival Edition | June 2011

art

The undergraduate exhibition includes the work of LindiLombard. She explains that her painting of a dog entitledConstrained? had come about “through a process of doingother small works” during which she recognised that shewas “painting and dealing with many forms of constraints”during her third-year project.

“My dog at this time had a form of cancer and was lickingherself and causing her condition to worsen. For herprotection we placed a cone on her, which preventedher from licking the cancerous growth. The image of ourdog at the time with the cone placed on her head wasto me a very powerful one that embodied the idea ofconstraints, which then moved me to paint the image ofour dog.”

“The message behind the painting Constrained? is toquestion and to become aware of constraints that areplaced on us by other people to protect us - but that

also limits us in the process - or the constraints we placeon ourselves to protect others,” added Lombard.

Lombard is extremely proud and excited to have herwork exhibited during the National Arts Festival. “It’sthe first time my work has been exhibited during Festival,so it really means a lot to me personally. It also meansgetting your work out there for people to see and thatis always exciting,” she said.

Head of the Fine Art Department, Professor DominicThorburn said the Department had a “long history ofaffording students the opportunity to acquire skills inprofessional practice and curation while also gainingvaluable exposure for their work within a national arena”.

fine“Rather like picking up a book in the middle.And that’s not to say they’re unfinished, justthat they are not an end in themselves. I findthis useful because it introduces dialogueand unpredictability into the vocabulary ofthe work,” explained Wilby.

Wet paint logo used toadvertise the postgraduate exhibition.

Fine Art Masters student,Mark Farmer

| Oil on canvas

In my work, I focus on adolescent teens atKingswood College High School, where I amcurrently employed as a student assistant.Regulations in regard to uniforms and in regardto the arrangement of each learner’s belongingsinsist on the sublimation/sacrificing of anindividual identity in favour of an institutionalone. Thus tiny departures from those norms,slight transgressions, might be understood assmall rebellions which the boarder stages againstdisciplinary structures and the conformitydemanded of him or her. I am particularlyinterested in these transgressions. I have produceda series of paintings where the head is croppedand my focus is on the tie as an item of clothingused to suggest containment, bodily discipline andconformity but against which the individual wearerseems sometimes to stage his own small rebellionby tying the garment in an unconventional way orperhaps leaving it untied.

Rhodos - Festival 12 -20 6/26/11 9:16 AM Page 1

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TWELVE The Rhodes University Community Newsletter

Dixie’s art moves abroad

exhibition

Ms Christine Dixie, practicing artist and alecturer in the Rhodes University Departmentof Fine Art, recently scored a dramatic coupfor both herself and South African art in generalwhen a number of her artworks were acquiredby the National Museum of African Art inWashington DC.

One of the 19 museums collectively known as the SmithsonianInstitution, the National Museum of African Art contains thelargest publicly held collection of contemporary African art inthe United States.

Among the artworks bought by the Smithsonian Institute is herinstallation The Binding, exhibited previously at the NationalArts Festival here in Grahamstown and at the AOP (Art on Paper)Gallery in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. The Binding is Dixie'sclear-eyed yet wistful look into the liminal space occupied bya boy child growing out of the realm of the mother and enteringthat of the father. The theme of sacrifice is dominant with, sheexplains, the Old Testament story of Isaac and Abraham beingmuch in her mind as she created the piece. Prints of her thensix-year-old son are shown at life size; he is asleep, bar thecentral picture, where his eyes are open and look directly atthe viewer.

The child is mirrored on a series of white beds, covered by analtar cloth. These are placed below each etched and calligraphedprint and separated by ephemeral curtains hung from the ceiling.A 'shadow' image of the child appears on each table, createdfrom tightly interlaced toy soldiers, carefully coated in lead byDixie and cut and glued together into the shape of the sleepingchild above. The use of soldiers, some of whom lost body partsin the artistic process, refers again to the sacrifice required toenter into the masculine world. In the story of Isaac and Abraham,Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son to God's will; he bindsthe boy and is about to carry out this command when Godintervenes. In this way, both Isaac and Abraham are identified,through sacrifice, as belonging to their patrilineal line; themessage is that it is through sacrifice that a boy child becomesa man, joining his father's world.

The Smithsonian Institute has stated that selected works by Dixiewill be on display in the National Museum of African Art's 2013exhibition, and in their exhibition and publication Earth Matters:Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa. Theseworks include Hide, Even in the Long Descent I-V and, possibly,Unravel. Space and design permitting, plans are underway forincluding The Binding, and possibly one or two of her otherworks, in a planned 2014 exhibition and concurrent publicationon African women artists.


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Award-winning artist NyanisoLindi ’s brilliant work will be on display at this year’sNational Arts Festival – and yet it will not be immediatelyobvious.

In fact, the support staff member in the Fine Arts Department has worked

long hours to frame many of the works on display in the Fine Art

undergraduate’s exhibition.

And this somehow is the story of Lindi’s life – an uneasy balancing act

between heady fame as winner of the Gerald Sekoto Award for most

promising artist and the reality of working as a studio attendant cleaning

up after students and helping them to produce their work.

It’s not that he resents helping other young artists – in fact he loves

imparting skills and having others benefit from his experience – but it

does make it harder for people to look up to him and see him as an artist

role model.

His greatest wish is that Grahamstown’s township children should be

inspired and assisted by the National Arts Festival to practice art and

develop their talents within their own environment and on an ongoing

basis. Because, he says, “art is what saved me (from a life of despair

and crime)”. He is grateful to the people who mentored and encouraged

him and says more of this is needed.

He points out that Nombulelo Secondary School – where he spent his

high school days - is still the only school in Grahamstown East to offer

Art as a subject and even there the facilities have not been upgraded

or developed for many years.

On the positive side, Lindi has had some wonderful opportunities to

develop as an artist. He was first invited to come and work at Rhodes

by Prof Dominic Thorburn who wanted him to assist the Master Printer

Tim Foulds to create graphic editions of the works of Egazini artists.

He later also made a significant contribution to the NAF exhibition by

well-known artist Vusi Khumalo.

During his stint working at Egazini,

Lindi was in contact with the late

artist Mark Hipper, and together

they “discovered” the work of a

young man named Zola Toyi who

suffered from autism but was

producing work of “great

emotional vitality”. Lindi

managed to win Toyi’s trust and

later helped him to mount the

exhibition entitled Ancestral

Voices at the Rhodes Press and

Print Research Unit in 2007.

And all this time, Lindi also

constantly refined his own

techniques of colour relief

work (from wood cuts) and

etching, at times morphing

the boundaries between

traditional representations

such as still life and life

drawings.

The year 2010 proved to be something of a roller-coaster ride for Lindi.

Returning from an inspiring and enjoyable three-month stay at the Cite

Internationale des Arts in Paris -- part of the his prize as winner of the

Gerald Sekoto Award -- he plunged straight into preparing for his final studio

practical, as well as trying to complete the outstanding credits for his Bachelor

of Fine Arts (BFA) degree, and holding down his job as a studio attendant.

Already a tall order, the challenge was exacerbated by a severe mugging

incident during which he was stabbed and beaten up. This meant an enforced

break from his activities while in the midst of producing a serious body of

work. He still managed to mount the exhibition but it cost him in terms of

finishing off his credits -- which he now aims do by the end of 2011.

Apart from his sought-after frames, Lindi will not be exhibiting at the National

Arts Festival this year as his solo exhibition is currently on tour around South

Africa and Zimbabwe. However, he will take some time out from his day

job to go and look at the exhibitions of other artists and find inspiration

wherever it might present itself – “even sometimes in the kitsch pieces being

sold by street vendors, if you look a little deeper”.

There is a sense that the 35-year old Lindi is still a man on a mission. “My

work didn’t end with winning an award. I have to constantly produce good

work.”

talentAn artistic balancing

act

THIRTEENFestival Edition | June 2011


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Grahamstown-based artist Mathias Chirombo has beenhard at work preparing a uniquely inspiring body ofwork for the National Arts Festival this year.

Having grown up in a Shona-speaking family in Harare, wherea strong belief in the spirit world and creating harmony betweenpeople and the natural world is revered, this rich spiritualculture has become the driving force behind his work.

Sacred Spaces, the exhibition can be viewed at the AlbanyMuseum’s Green Gallery for the duration of the Festival. Chirombograduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art at Rhodes University in2010 and this is his third National Arts Festival exhibition. Hiswork has been bought by private collectors in South Africa, theUnited Kingdom and Australia-where he received a scholarshipfrom the LBW trust for his four-year degree, which was alsopartially funded by a Rhodes scholarship.

“My paintings depict the places where vadzimu [a Shona termfor the ‘spirits of the dead’ or ‘ancestors’] exist,” says Chirombo.

As he specifies in his portfolio: “It is in this space of knowingyet not knowing, of mystery and of understanding what we cannotalways explain, that sacredness exists.” Struggling to find the

words to adequately describe the intricate process of communicating withthe spirit ancestors, he tells a story about one practice through which hisparents ask for guidance. “Because I grew up in a family where such ritualsare performed, my painting has become a continuation of that, of payinghomage to the spirits, acknowledging their presence,” he says.

His body of work for this exhibition is created through two processesdepicting different types of landscapes -- one based on realism and onein which he intuitively depicts a sacred landscape and the presence ofspirit ancestors, using himself as a catalyst. “I can’t force the issue, I painta landscape but that’s all I know, I am guided,” he says. The figures inthe paintings are reminiscent of human or animal forms yet diaphanous,making their shape recognisable yet unknown. Chirombo emphasises thatit is pertinent that the spirits are within a landscape as “they are linkedto nature and animals. They are like totems. To be in harmony with thosesacred spaces is respecting nature.”

He likens it to rock paintings and how we don’t always understand themysteries of what is depicted in them. Yet people of all beliefs can sensethat element of the unknown, the mystical. “I get a shock at how, whenI’m thinking about something but set it aside, it comes through in mypainting. I am so grateful for the ability to ask for guidance through mypainting. People have been touched, it affects them deeply sometimes,some have even cried. A painting changes someone’s life if it has relevanceto their life. This is how I can make a contribution.”

Sacred Spaces

FOURTEEN The Rhodes University Community Newsletter

space

“There are two tiers to my work: How what I paint is relevant to my own lifeand how people find their own resonance or meanings in my work,” he says.“I want to show people how powerful ancestral spirits and mediums are andhow they are present in our lives. They see everything, every single person,every decision you make. It opens up the door for you and people close toyou. I try to let it out, let it speak for itself.”

The story ofa songThe Language We Cry In is a contemporary dancepiece that draws on universal themes using a uniquecombination of Grahamstown talent. Under theauspices of Ubom! East Cape Drama Company, thepiece is choreographed by Rhodes Drama studentSifiso Sikhakhane and features the Kingswood CollegeConcert Band and teenage dancers from the AmaphikoTownship Dance Project.

Sikhakhane says he was inspired by an amazing story portrayed in a

documentary called The Language You Cry In, which he watched while

studying Ethnomusicology in 2008. The film featured his lecturer, Cynthia

Schmidt, and related the extraordinary history of a song that originated

among the rice cutters of Sierra Leone. Many generations later, the same

song was being sung on another continent, as an African-American lullaby.

Schmidt was on the team -- along with Joseph Opala from Sierra Leone’s

Fourah Bay College -- who traced the origins of the song, finding that it

was actually a dirge (a song sung at burials) that had survived through

slavery.

In terms of creating the narrative for the piece, Sikhakhane decided from

the beginning to “allow the kids to take ownership of their work” so both

he and Kingswood College’s Stephen Holder, who conducts the orchestra,

gave the musicians and dancers tools to explore and express what they

believe the story is about.

Sikhakhane choreographed the dance beforehand but let the dancers

rehearse while the band improvised. “It was great to give the kids that

freedom, to play with ideas,” says Sikhakhane. He was so touched by the

story of the song that it made him think about culture, memory and

identity. “I believe that if you can speak another language, you can live

in another culture. When we cry over the dead, we speak in our mother

tongue but even if you don’t speak that particular language, you can

understand it. This is how language is part of your identity,” Sikhakhane

says.

“Every song we sing has a meaning in terms of our personal

history as well as the history of the people who are singing

and have sung the song. Memory is entirely intangible, it is a

gift you cannot touch,” says Sikhakhane.

Sikhakhane hopes that by watching the dance, the audience will question

their own roots, as this is not merely a story about slavery, it affects us

all. It made him ponder how two cultures -- such as the African slaves and

American colonists -- saw each other and how both cultures impacted on

one another “without just naming an oppressor”.

Mathias Chirombo,Fine Art graduate, willbe exhibiting his work

at the National ArtsFestival.


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FIFTEENFestival Edition | June 2011

Neurons spark in theArts Lounge

collaborate

Front l to r: Nomusa Makhubu, RachelBaasch, Ruth Simbao, Paul CooperMiddle l to r: Lerato Bereng, ZamaNsele, Annemi Conradie, Dotun MakunBack: Gerald Machona

In an innovative collaboration between the Fine Art andDrama Departments, the new Arts Lounge at 17a SomersetStreet is set to be an unmissable experience for thoseFestival-goers who truly appreciate the chance to bothview and discuss art in all its myriad forms.

The Lounge is the brainchild of Ruth Simbao, Associate Professor of Art Historyand Visual Culture at Rhodes University. Through her dedication to breakingdown the boundaries between branches of the Humanities, Prof Simbao hascreated a venture that is set to shake up the experience of festinos and toinitiate conversations that will carry on long after the last Festival posters areremoved and Grahamstown has returned to its usual sedate pace.

The Arts Lounge is made possible by an infusion of funds from the MellonFoundation and the National Arts Festival, and is hosted by the Rhodes UniversityFine Art Mellon Focus Area: Visual and Performing Arts of Africa (ViPAA).

The research in which ViPAA is engaged is themed The Audacity of Place –Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa, and the team Prof Simbao has gatheredtogether consists of both artists and art historians -- all with a keen interest inthe complex relationship that exists between place and identity. The individualresearch carried out by ViPAA team members comes together in ways whichsubvert the traditional Euro-centric view of African art and, instead, look todevelop a more nuanced and relevant discourse and vocabulary with which toapproach it.

Prof Simbao is a widely acknowledged authority on the arts of Africa and hasundertaken extensive research on performance in relation to cultural festivalsin Zambia. Her current research interests incorporate site-specificity, diasporaand xenophobia. Other ViPAA members include Zimbabwean visual and performanceartist Gerald Machona, known for the use of Zim dollars in his artworks, and NomusaMakhubu, a Lecturer in Fine Art and PhD student focusing on Nollywood.

Dotun Makun, a current ViPAA MFA student from Nigeria, will take part in a paneldiscussion on negotiating ‘strangeness' and xenophobia in contemporary spacesalongside ViPAA member Rachel Baasch, artist Maurice Mbikayi, Dr James Gambizafrom Environmental Science, Dr Sam Naidu from the English Department, and PhDstudent in Fine Art, Biggie Samwanda.

Mbikayi trained in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and on July 9 will treatFestival-goers to a contemporary performance on horseback in which he, swathedin bandages, aims to evoke the vulnerable situation in which incomers from otherAfrican countries find themselves in South Africa. Particularly pertinent in view ofthe recent renewal of xenophobic attacks in the Limpopo area, this piece of streettheatre promises to be a Festival highlight.

Two particular events illustrate the collaborative and cross-disciplinary nature ofthis project. On June 30, a poetry and music performance will see Anton Kruegerfrom the Drama Department reading a poem accompanied by Machona’s hauntinglyoriginal music compositions. On July 8, LesDem draws together performers GavinKrastin and Madele Vermaak from the Drama Department with Rat Western andSonja Smit from Fine Art. Fine Arts lecturer Christine Dixie will also be presentinga screening of her installation The Binding, recently purchased by the SmithsonianMuseum for African Arts in Washington DC. Other ViPAA members, Eben Lochner,Zama Nsele, Paul Cooper, Lerato Bereng and Annemi Conradie are involved in variousperformances and panel discussions. Distinguished guests include Mandie van derSpuy, Michelle Constant, Nandipha Mntambo, Serge Nitegeka and Jay Pather. EasternCape artists will also make their mark. Look out for discussions by Vusi Khumaloand Meshack Masuka, as well as a skin suspension in the ViPAA garden by tattooartist John Wayne Stevens.

The Arts Lounge will open each afternoon with a performance vignette curated byAthina Vahla, lecturer in the Rhodes University Drama Department. Each item onthe programme promises to spark the neurons and engage the senses of thoseensconced on the Lounge's sofas. A variety of comestibles and tea, coffee andgluhwein will also be available to ensure festinos' physical appetites are not neglected.

For more info on the Arts Lounge schedule see www.research-africa-arts.com.

Dotun Makun, self portrait


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words

SIXTEEN The Rhodes University Community Newsletter

Poetry Professor Chris Mann has a

way of using words to make even

the most complex issues

tangible,

accessible and

digestible. Who

better then to

be in charge of

Wordfest, the

multi-lingual

celebration of language

and literature that runs

concurrently with the

National Arts

Festival?

Wordfest serves as a

Rhodes outreach

project, especially for the

readers, writers and

language practitioners of

the Eastern Cape.

Prof Mann is professor of Poetry in the Institute for the Study of English

in Africa (ISEA), from where Wordfest is organised and administered. The

ISEA works closely with other Rhodes University departments such as the

School of Languages, School of English and the Journalism Department.

Planning starts in November, with the work gaining in intensity as the

Festival draws closer.

Wordfest 2011 will see the launch of over 30 books in five different

languages: English, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Setswana and Sesotho, by both new

and established authors. This includes the launch of veteran journalist

David Beresford’s book and includes a lecture by Beresford entitled Truth

is Stranger than Fiction: Shattering exposés of Vorster, Zuma & others.

A collection of African poems that has been translated into Mandarin by

a scholar from the School of Languages, with the help of Prof Russell

Kaschula, will also be launched.

A new Wordfest platform has been created for singer-songwriters in South

Africa. They will perform free of charge next to the Wordfest restaurant

in Eden Grove during lunchtime. The purpose of this is to encourage original

lyrics that come out of the South African context.

The developmental aspect of Wordfest has always been very important to

Prof Mann, who spent a number of years working in rural-based NGOs. To

this end he has built a relationship with the Eastern Cape Department of

Sports, Recreation, Arts and Culture that has resulted in an opportunity

for 100 writers from across the Eastern Cape to attend writing workshops

at Eden Grove as part of Wordfest. All of this takes a huge amount of

administration, and Prof Mann is delighted at the way in which ISEA secretary

Nomangezi Kelemi has developed and honed her skills to provide an excellent

administration service in collaboration with supervisor, Carol Leff. He even

honoured them with a poem entitled “In praise of good administrators”!

Other developmental opportunities have been provided to Radio Journalism

students and practitioners - who report on Wordfest to over 14 million

people in three languages daily - as well as to print journalists who work

for Wordstock, the Wordfest newspaper, and management interns that

obtain skills and experience in events management for the literary arts.

Last year, Prof Mann launched his latest poetry collection called Home

from Home, which has since become a prescribed work for English major

students at a university in the USA. He was also nominated to take up the

Chair of Poetry at Oxford.

Perhaps the greatest spin-off of Wordfest, says Prof Mann, is that people

of all persuasions have said they “feel at home on Rhodes campus”, and

many indicated that they themselves or their children would seriously

consider studying at Rhodes.

Wordfest - a South Africancelebration of literacy and

development

Nomangesi Kelemi,Secretary at the ISEA plays an important supporting role in theadministration of Wordfest

Professor Chris Mann


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Three talented fourth-year RhodesMusic students Mia Pistorius, Jacquesdu Plessis and Andrew Duncan will beflexing their musical muscles on theFringe programme at the National ArtsFestival this year.

Du Plessis and Duncan are particularly excited to beperforming a programme called Four Hands at theBeethoven Room, which comprises both duet and solopieces. “It was a challenge to bring two differentpeoples’ ideas and styles together but it works wellbecause we are critical of each other, in a good way,”said Duncan. Du Plessis agrees, adding that they arevery honest with each other, which makes it easierto reject ideas that don’t work. “We’re thick-skinned.As a duo we are very strong because we get on verywell and we laugh all the time,” added Du Plessis.

The two will be giving eight performances throughoutFestival. The two duets are Schubert’s Fantasie in FMinor and Faure’s Dolly Suite. Du Plessis will be playingRachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Minor, op 23 no 5 andReflets dans l’eau from Images, Book 1 by Debussy,and Duncan will play Schumann’s Papillon, op. 2.

Du Plessis hastens to add that they are not sellingthemselves as ‘concert pianists’, but “as students

making our way into that world, so it’s important tohave fun while you’re doing it”. All three studentsexpressed their admiration of how supportive theMusic Department has been, especially their teacher,acclaimed pianist Catherine Foxcroft.

“We listened to a lot of recordings of the pieces weplay, which was very important towards realising howto shape the interpretation,” said Du Plessis. “There’salways one element that’s more important, that canbe singled out. In that sense it’s what the ear wantsto hear.”

Mia Pistorius is in her final BMus year and will beperforming six recitals of what she calls “only beautifulpieces” – each of the two different programmes willbe centred around a major work. The promising youngtalent started playing the piano at the age of sevenand has already performed to great acclaim in Germanyand Bulgaria where she attended piano master classesand festivals in 2010. This plunged her into unfamiliarterritory, which she says “had a profound influenceon the way I see my own music”.

Pistorius will play Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B Minor,marking the centenary of the composer’s birth thisyear. The other major work, Beethoven’s Sonata no21 in C Major (opus 53) runs for 30 minutes and is“substantial and recognisable, but challenging forme”. She also likes to “champion unknown composers”

by introducing the audience to something new andspecial. Among these is the modern American composerLowell Liebermann, who composed Piano Sonata no.3,op.82 in 2002 and Rautavaara’s Etudes, op.42 (1969).As she quipped: “If I’m experiencing a challenge, theaudience should be challenged too!”

“In this kind of environment (the National Arts Festival)people are excited to be entertained. For me it’swonderful when someone comes up to me and saysthey enjoyed it or they heard a piece they haven’theard before. You want the audience to respond intheir own unique ways. So much of music is anexpression of yourself -- it has to change with you,”she concluded.

The Grahamstown Sextet

SEVENTEENFestival Edition | June 2011

The Grahamstown Sextet is just one example of the musical talentand energy that can be found in this small city. Senior RhodesMusic lecturer Catherine Foxcroft is thrilled that the Sextet, ofwhich she is a part, features on the new Arena Music programmeat the 2011 National Arts Festival.

The Sextet comprises four musicians from Grahamstown including Foxcroft, who is anacclaimed classical pianist, Jenny Brand (clarinet), Hilary Paterson (oboe) and Boris Mohr(French horn), all of whom teach music at local independent school, Kingswood College.They are joined by highly acclaimed flautist Liesel Stoltz from Cape Town and Penny Fraser,who plays principal bassoon in the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

The sextet first played together last year for the Grahamstown Music Society. After thesuccess of this outing, they made the decision to present a series of performances at theFestival. Foxcroft describes the new Arena programme as a “comfortable place”, as opposedto the more high-pressured Main programme.

In June, the Grahamstown Sextet will air its repertoire at the South African Society forResearch in Music (SASRIM) Conference being held in the Rhodes Music Department. Theythen have a week of rehearsals together before their first Festival appearance on Friday,July 1. Foxcroft is excited about the rehearsal period. That length of time, she says, is rarein the musical world and - having put together their initial concert for the Music Society injust two days - she is looking forward to working more closely with the others for theseperformances.

The Grahamstown Sextet will be playing a variety of pieces, including solos and windwoodquintets. Foxcroft is eager for audiences to hear the pairing of the piano with the woodwindinstruments. The more usual combination is with the strings, and the Sextet will thereforebe offering a richly unusual sound, with what is described on the Festival Programme as “anunique variety of timbres, textures and styles”.

The venue for the performances is the Beethoven Room, and the repertoire extends fromthe Baroque period through to the contemporary era.

The Sextet will play four shows, compactly scheduled during the first days of the Festivalas Fraser has to return to Johannesburg for the opening of the Philharmonic season.

What the ear wants to hear

The Rhodes Music Department is hoping to increasepublic awareness of the jazz curriculum offered atRhodes during this year’s Jazz festival. Head ofDepartment, Dr Jeffrey Brukman, says he is hopingthat the wide array of jazz concerts, featuring localand international performers, will attract interest inthe music courses offered at Rhodes. “I’m hopingthat other musicians and interested jazz enthusiastswill become aware that jazz forms part of thecurriculum at Rhodes,” he said.

Dr Brukman, who lectures in Musicology and Music Theory, said thatalthough no Rhodes students will be performing in this year’s jazz line up,he is hoping that two talented members of staff will take to the stagenext year. Dr Nishlyn Ramanna and Mr Jared Lang have been teaming upfor experimental jazz piano sessions, and Dr Brukman said he is encouragingthem to represent Rhodes next year.

As part of the National Youth Jazz Festival, which runs concurrently tothe Jazz Festival, Rhodes Music Department will play host to internationallyrenowned musician, Professor Carolyn Wilkins, who has headed up theensemble programme at Berkley, University of California, for 30 years.Wilkins will be visiting Rhodes in her capacity as a Fullbright specialist,and Brukman said he is hoping this will mark the beginning of a successfulworking relationship. “It will be great to develop this contact with Carolynand to encourage her to study jazz in the Eastern Cape,” he said. AlongsideRhodes’s jazz curriculum, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University andUniversity of Fort Hare are developing courses that will contribute to thedeveloping jazz curriculum in the Eastern Cape.

Music DepartmentJazz Festival

Mia Pistorius


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Thinking Africa launchBy Siphokazi Magadla

In The Invention of Africa V.Y Mudimbe reminds usthat “although generalizations are of course dangerous,colonialism and colonization basically meanorganization, arrangement. The two words derivefrom the Latin word colêre, meaning to cultivateor to design … Colonists … as well as colonialists …have all tended to organize and transform non-European areas into fundamentally Europeanconstructs.”

If colonialism was an organization or arrangement of a certain kind,then post-coloniality can be seen, in part, as an attempt to re-organiseor re-arrange Africa in order to restore pre-colonial modes of thinkingand being. For post-apartheid South Africa this has meant a re-organisationand re-orientation of knowledge but also a re-arrangement of theinstitutionalisation of that knowledge. This generates three very complex,related questions: Why transformation? How to drive transformation?and, What institutional arrangement will best allow us to drive thattransformation? Indeed, after 17 years, post-Apartheid South Africaof 2011 still faces the urgency to transform the epistemic structureof knowledge production in South Africa in order to provide qualityeducation.

As a response to this multiplicity of questions, at the beginning of2010 the Department of Political and International Studies at RhodesUniversity launched its flagship project, Thinking Africa. Headed bya Departmental Steering Committee, the project seeks to create aninternationally renowned postgraduate programme on African studies.This is to keep young researchers studying in South Africa instead ofoverseas. It makes it possible for students to collaborate withinternationally acclaimed scholars located in institutions in and outsideAfrica through its Thinking Africa Associate Fellows composed ofnational and international scholars. With a commitment to contributing

to an inclusive transformative pedagogical national project, the Departmentis sufficiently ambitious to seek, not only to contribute to existing academicwork on Africa, but also to critically rethink the study of Africa.

The project will offically be launched on July 6 with a range of differentevents including; a Public Lecture by V.Y Mudimbe, a Colloquium, a WinterSchool and a Postgraduate Proposal Writing Workshop. The theme of thisyear's Public Lecture, Colloquium and Winter School is ‘Fanon: 50 YearsLater’ in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the death of Frantz Fanon.The intention is to hold these or similar events each year during theJune/July University break period. Each year’s Thinking Africa events willhave a particular theme and will tie into a particular postgraduate coursethat will be offered during the second semester. The course for this yearis a 13-week course by Richard Pithouse called Mind of the oppressed.The project has secured a book series publication from UKZN Press wherepapers from the colloquium will be published.

Magadla is a Lecturer in Rhodes University’s Political and InternationalStudies Department. She teaches International Relations, and Africansecurity and development.

politicalEIGHTEEN The Rhodes University Community Newsletter

Thinking Africa Departmental Steering Committee: from left to right Mr Richard Pithouse,Dr Sally Matthews, Mr Mike Mavura, Prof Leonhard Praeg and Ms Siphokazi Magadla.


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NINETEENFestival Edition | June 2011

Thinking Africa in Grahamstown

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By Richard Pithouse

Grahamstown is named after Colonel John Graham, a colonialsoldier, who, with what he called a proper degree of terror, drove20 000 Xhosa people from the area and built a colonial garrisonin 1812.

Seventeen years after the end of apartheid the municipality is named in honour of NxeleMakana who, in 1819, led an attack on Graham’s garrison. Of course there have been manymoments, some of them important, where it could be said that the legacies of Graham andMakana have been brought together in a higher synthesis. But on the whole the colonialstructure of the town remains strikingly and terribly evident. This fact is not solely a legacyof the past. Post-apartheid development has often taken a neo-apartheid form of activelyreinscribing exclusion into the physical structure of the town. And of course Rhodes Universityis named for a man whose imperial vision stretched from the Cape to Cairo. The universityhas been both a site of struggle and a tentacle in a colonial and then neo-colonial systemof knowledge production and distribution.

Thinking Africa here is not without its challenges. But the fundamental task is clear and thatis, to borrow an elegant phrase from the Caribbean Philosophy Association, to shift thegeography of reason. The idea is to self-consciously think from Africa, in community withothers in and out of the academy, rather than, as has been more typical in the academy,about Africa in a way that constructs Africa as a problem to be diagnosed from without.We aim to create a new node in a network of insurgent spaces that can think Africa, andits place in the global South, not as an object of research but as a subject of emancipatoryaction.

From the 6th to the 9th of July some of the very best scholars in South Africa,people like Nomboniso Gasa and Pumla Gqola, as well as the very best Fanonscholars in the world, people like Nigel Gibson, Lewis Gordon and Ato Sekyi-Otu will come together at Rhodes University to reflect on the meaning ofFrantz Fanon fifty years after his death.

This will be the start of the Thinking Africa project and it will be a magnificent start. In thecoming years there will be other meetings on other themes. But to start with Fanon, a thinkerwith an unambiguous commitment to African emancipation, is a clear and deliberatedeclaration of intellectual intent.

Pithouse is a Lecturer in Rhodes University’s Political andInternational Studies Department. He is interested in thephilosophy and politics of equality and freedom.

Political and International Studies postgraduatestudents from left to right: Simone Levy, Danielle Bouuler, Chantelle Malan and Bongani Hanise.

Mr Richard Pithouse


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business

Prof Owen Skae, Director of Rhodes University’sBusiness School, is excited about the involvement ofthe School in this year’s Festival line-up.

Describing the Festival as having national and international prominence,and involving “a wonderful diverse mix of people”, Skae, who succeededProf Gavin Staude as Director in 2010, said it was important for the BusinessSchool to “be part of the Festival as part of our contribution to the EasternCape”.

This year will see the return of a “very successful” collaboration betweenthe School, the National Arts Festival and Makana Municipality in the formof a training programme for local entrepreneurs.

Launched last year after a discussion between Skae and CEO of the NationalArts Festival, Mr Tony Lankester, the programme involves a six-week trainingcourse for local entrepreneurs, aimed at facilitating the development ofsustainable small business operations. “The idea is to get local entrepreneursinvolved in providing services to Festival-goers, with a view to getting theminvolved in the other festivals that happen in Grahamstown,” said Skae.Such services include providing cellphone charging facilities and foodservices.

The Business School will also make a contribution to Think!Fest in the formof a series of lectures under the banner Leadership for Sustainability.Speakers will include Clem Sunter, former Chair and CEO of Anglo American’sGold and Uranium Division, on a sustainable future; Steuart Pennington,co-editor and publisher of nine books on South Africa and Africa and areceiver of the 2007 Public Service Entrepreneur of the Year Award fromthe African Heritage Society, on Sustainable competitiveness; and LesAupiais, guest presenter on and director of Carte Blanche and one of SouthAfrica’s most versatile, experienced and creative media figures, onsustainable media. There will also be a panel discussion involving Pennington,Aupiais and Cedric Tyler of Business Genetics, which will be chaired bySkae.

CHERTL Roundtable examinesCritical Issues in Higher Education

TWENTY The Rhodes University Community Newsletter

By Professor Pedro Alexis Tabensky

It’s increasingly argued that South Africa is a neo-colonialstate. It is suggested that its institutions and the mindsetof its people are still largely structured by the nefariouslegacy of apartheid. This legacy is not identical to apartheid,but it is an unhealthy offshoot of it. Frantz Fanon andSteve Biko warned us that social health couldn’t be achievedmerely by the creation of a black elite which has not dealtwith its own brokenness and with the transfer of politicalpower to black hands.

They argue that the only true path to liberation involves a quest for a newhumanity, divested of the pathologies brought about by ‘centuries ofincomprehension’. Such a quest cannot be successful without a clearunderstanding of the neo-colony’s ability to replicate structures of injusticein society and in the minds of its subjects.

It would be short of miraculous if our academic institutions did not inheritthe legacy that largely informs South African life in general, including themental life of its inhabitants. South African Universities are disproportionatelypopulated by white students and staff and it is crucial that we come to aclearheaded understanding of why this is the case.

It seems that part of the explanation will involve appealing to wide socialfactors, such as the legacy of racist and economic injustice, the lack ofproper role models within poor communities and the scourge of mediocreschooling. But it would be odd if racism stopped at the campus gates.

Indeed, one often hears black university students and staff complainingabout racism on campus today. A cynic could argue that these complaintsare unfounded. But, given the deep legacy of racist injustice that pervades

almost every aspect of life in South Africa, it would be highly unlikely that racismwas not richly present on today’s campuses, and it is arguably our responsibilityas scholars to identify its manifestations. And, indeed, to find a way forward.

Some have argued that the South African university is a colonial construct and thatthe very content of what is taught, and key structural features of the sector, areracist. Others have argued that there is a problem with institutional culture thatmakes it the case that many black university students and staff find it difficult tothrive. But what precisely do we mean by ‘institutional culture’?

This and other questions will be addressed in the third CHERTL Roundtable Serieson Critical Issues in Higher Education to be held at Rhodes University on July 11 -13. This annual Series will continue indefinitely and it aims to be the principal forawhere critical issues of higher education are discussed.

Tabensky is a Professor of Philosophy at Rhodes University.

Rhodes Business School engages in the FestProfessor Pedro Alexis Tabensky

Professor Owen Skae

festival edition - rhodes university

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